1 legendary scientist meeple as the first player marker - (artwork of Marie Curie coming soon!) - unlocked at £7500 as a stretch goal

Cardboard divider to easily separate decks

Lab Wars available in French/German/Spanish as an add-on

Backers automatically receive a free Print and Play file of Lab Wars in English/French/German/Spanish for pledges £19 and over

Physical versions of German/French/Spanish also available!

Simply pledge for the English version of the game first (£19 or more)

Then add an extra £15 for the base game

Or £20 for the base game+expansion in your pledge

These are limited edition to what is ordered through Kickstarter and our website as a pre-order

You will then receive an extra set of (the cards only of) Lab Wars in French/German or Spanish - simply message us to let us know which language you want!

Rulebooks will only be sent as PDF files and not with the extra cards

The extra cards will be packaged alongside your Kickstarter order!

Upgraded components or extras!

Unique academia themed game based on historical events

Lab Wars is a unique card game where you get to recreate the spirit and fun of working in a lab and learn about historical scientific sabotage in the process!

Social deduction and city building mechanics

Out-think your competitors by deducing which character they will play each turn and get a bonus for doing so! Play testers repeatedly told us that trying to figure out what characters your competitors would play was the most fun part! We've blended this in neatly with a "city building" mechanic allowing you to build up your lab to ramp up your resource generation each turn in a strategic fashion.

Rigorously play tested

The game has been rigorously play tested for nearly a year both between the designers privately but also with friends, work colleagues, other board game designers and blind play testers. We've even put their names below so you can ask for yourself!

Educational

We've put flavour texts on most of the cards so you know what the cards you play with do in real life. Each pledge also gets you a free educational PDF detailing the experiments and scientific sabotage behind each card. Having scientific backgrounds as the designers we'll make sure that the scientific information behind the pdf is sound, correct and up to date.

Replay-ability

The game has been made in a way where you can pick it up and have fun each time you play it. This is owing to the multiple strategies you can employ to win the game.

Legends of science mini expansion pack:

Will be shrink-wrapped separately to the base game cards. Above box shown for illustrative purposes. You will get the following:

5 extra Legendary character cards. Each player will randomly swap one of their base set non-Professor cards with one legendary character. Each legendary character will give unique bonuses which will be thematic to that character.

6x2 Lab item cards. These will directly relate to the 5 legendary characters.

10 extra Action cards. These will be tales of scientific sabotage that our backers will suggest in polls throughout the campaign.

2 new and different types of Impact cards. Final versions and quantity to be confirmed.

SETUP

Initial setup of Lab Wars for two players

Initial setup of Lab Wars

Players start with 2 pipettes to place in their lab area. They are also given 2 research points, and 3 randomly drawn lab item cards to put in their hand. *The gif above incorrectly deals a pipette and a thermal cycler to two players*

Download the rulebook by clicking above. The rulebook is currently in an un-proofed state. Graphics designs will be improved after we (hopefully!) get funded. We will also commission professional proof reading before the final version is sent to the manufacturers.

PLEASE read the following carefully. Firstly, there are some countries/regions which are EXCLUDED from shipping and therefore will not be able to receive Lab Wars.

Countries/Regions which are EXCLUDED from shipping entirely are:

Argentina, Brazil, Brunei, Columbia, El Salvador, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iraq, Malaysia, Peru, Puerto Rico, Syria, Taiwan, UAE, Uruguay. - An alternative approach would be to ship the game to a friend from any other country and ask them to ship it to you.

Unfortunately due to high shipping prices and logistical problems, we have been advised not to ship to the these countries.

Any person who has accidentally backed from the above countries will be asked to cancel their pledge.

We are able to send Lab Wars to all other countries...

FREE SHIPPING ON MOST TIERS TO THE FOLLOWING COUNTRIES:

USA, UK, CANADA, GERMANY, FRANCE, BELGIUM, LUXEMBOURG AND SPAIN

We have provided the matrix below so you can see which pledge level gives certain shipping rates.

There will be NO CUSTOMS CHARGES for any backer.

Our transparent manufacturing and shipping process:

Our manufacturing and fulfilment companies respectively

The game will be manufactured by Whatz Games.

It will then be locally shipped from Whatz Games' factory to a warehouse in Shanghai port.

Shipping will be conducted by Games Quest from then on. The warehouse at Shanghai port will be of the shipping company's choosing.

The pallets containing the games will then be loaded onto a ship and take 2-3 months to arrive at a port in the UK. At that point the shipping company will conduct all required paperwork and VAT/Import Tax handling.

Once cleared and paid for (by you the backers through the funding!) the pallets will be delivered to a Surrey based warehouse owned by Games Quest to be fulfilled by the company.

Games will then be delivered internationally to backers taking 1-4 weeks depending on location.

Doing the manufacturing, shipment and fulfilment this way meant that we could efficiently subsidise the shipping to your door without compromising on quality.

Risks and challenges

We at Alley Cat Games cannot prevent weather or god-like problems causing unexpected challenges! However, we can promise a few things to you.

Both Caezar and Kuly have day time jobs which require a huge amount of project management skills to run Lab Wars alongside their jobs. Having both done PhDs, (well, Kuly is now doing a second doctorate for good measure) we know what it means to research, conduct and deliver a project. As you will have read above Caezar is a post-doctoral fellow at Cambridge University, while Kuly is a final year Clinical Psychology trainee. Excellence and delivery is required in our jobs and we have transferred these skills when creating Lab Wars.

This is our first Kickstarter project, however, we have spent a HUGE amount of time researching the logistics of delivering the game. This is on top of the weeks of hours worth of play-testing and designing of the game itself.

To ensure maximum benefit to you our backers we wanted to work with excellent partners in the industry who have been tested and internationally renowned. To that end the manufacturing of Lab Wars will be handled by Whatz Games who are experts in game manufacturing and have created 100s of games in the industry including games like King of Tokyo and the Valeria series. We have already agreed the components, upgrade costs and delivery costs with them. They are just waiting for our signature once (we hope!) the project gets funded.

The delivery will be shipped from Whatz Games to our fulfilment company GamesQuest, based in the UK. Again, we chose them for quality over price due to their expertise and knowledge in delivering products worldwide at fair prices. GamesQuest is an hour away physically from our house, so we can check everything thoroughly and potentially add extra items based on the stretch goals.

Rest assured the product will be delivered to you with excellent quality, and we hope more importantly fun!

Support

Select this reward

Pledge £1 or more
About $1.44

Undergraduate Tier

+You receive a BIG thank you from us!
+You receive a FREE educational PDF of the experiments and historical sabotage that were the basis of the game!
+ Contribute to votes on final contents of the game

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge £39 or more
About $56

Principal Investigator Tier

RECEIVE ALL OF THE ABOVE

+ Upgraded components Including:
Wooden tokens
Higher quality cards
Plastic insert
+ Signed by us the creators (optional but without shrink wrap)
+ An extra legendary meeple!
+ Includes FREE international shipping and customs to many countries based on the post doc tier (see shipping for details)

approximately US$55/€48/CAD$70
- includes ALL stretch levels (where applicable)

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge £59 or more
About $85

Professor Tier

RECEIVE ALL OF THE ABOVE

+ Pick which one of the action cards YOUR FACE will feature on!
(Must give us photo/details no later than 1 week after campaign ends. You will have artistic input in how the card will come across but we have final say).
+ FREE international shipping and customs to many countries (see shipping for details)

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge £59 or more
About $85

NEW Professor Tier

RECEIVE:

1 Copy of Lab Wars
1 Copy of Legends of Science mini expansion pack

+ Pick which one of the action cards YOUR FACE will feature on from the Legends of Science expansion pack or 2 remaining base game action cards!
(Must give us photo/details no later than 1 week after campaign ends. You will have artistic input in how the card will come across but we have final say).
+ Add £14 to include the Deluxe version
- May not be purchased if you purchased Professor Tier previously
+ FREE international shipping and customs to many countries (see shipping for details)

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge £136 or more
About $196

Departmental Tier

RECEIVE ALL OF THE ABOVE

- EXCLUDING: a choice of customising an action card
+ INCLUDES: Our illustrator will draw you and 4 other buddies in your own copy of the game as the characters! (Must provide images or details no later than 1 week after the campaign ends).
- Your personalised characters will be manufactured and shipped by another company based in the USA.
+ FREE international shipping and customs to US/Canada or £4 shipping to EU, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.